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Aloha, welcome back from space ? pic.twitter.com/xWPN09WtawAug 18, 2020
SpaceX just removed another payload shroud from the sky, and you can see the video of the dramatic cosmic capture.
The SpaceX boat fitted with a GO mesh Ms. Tree hung half of a falling payload fairing on Tuesday, August 18, shortly after a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket launched 58 Starlink Internet satellites and three Earth observation satellites in orbit.
Payload fairings are the fairings that protect the satellites during launch. SpaceX fairings come in two pieces, both of which return to Earth under parachutes in a guided fashion, using small thrusters. Such technology makes it easier to recover and reuse the fairings, which cost around $ 6 million each, said SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk.
Related: SpaceX’s Starlink satellite mega-constellation launches in photos
GO Ms. Tree and her sister ship, GO Ms. Chief, are also part of this image. Seawater is extremely corrosive, so ripping the fairing halves out of the sky makes the renovation easier, Musk said. Ships have hung a handful of fairings to date, including a double take during the launch of a South Korean military satellite last month. (However, splashing in the ocean doesn’t prevent reuse; SpaceX has refoundable fairings that it fished out of the water.)
GO Ms. Chief took a half fairing out of the Atlantic Ocean today. But GO Ms. Tree grabbed the other, a hit captured by a camera-equipped drone. Musk posted this footage on Twitter Tuesday, marking the 43-second video with playful and incongruous lounge music.
Today’s launch featured reuse action on multiple fronts. It was the sixth launch of this first Falcon 9 stage, for example, a milestone SpaceX had never reached before. And more takeoffs are likely to come for the booster, which made a successful landing on a ship at sea on Tuesday.
Starlink is SpaceX’s nascent constellation of internet satellites. The company has launched nearly 600 Starlink spacecraft to date, and many more will be launched in the near future: SpaceX has permission to launch 12,000 of these satellites and has requested permission to lease up to 30,000 in more of that.
The other three satellites that are mounted today are SkySats. They belong to a company based in San Francisco Planet, which operates the world’s largest constellation of Earth observation spacecraft.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out There” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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